Three ways to improve the classroom

I am not an educator, administrator or highly trained instructor. But I am a good observer, knowledgeable journalist and hopefully, a fairly good reporter.

Therefore, I think my opinion might be worth at least a thousand pesos even if you don’t cross the border.

When I retired from KENS-TV on December 31st, 1998, I started a new job at TXN, the Texas Network on Monday, January 3rd, 1999. After 20-months the plug was pulled on a great concept for covering Texas news and sports.

Dr. James Leininger, founder of KCI (Kinetic Concepts), poured about $20 million into the four news bureaus: San Antonio, Austin, Houston and Dallas Had we been given the 3 to 5 years that were expected, TXN would have been a formidable Texas news disseminator.

Station manager Bob Rogers hired me to be senior sports correspondent, giving me total sports license on what games to cover and who should be the sports reporter. Rogers had also hired me in 1971 from Houston when he was news director for KENS-TV. We were caught with our cameras off not seeing the forthcoming shutdown by KCI management.

It wasn’t long that Time Warner and Belo combined money and ideas to begin operating News9, a news-weather-sports television operation 24/7. It, too, was beginning to have an impact on the local viewership when the companies decided to split the sheets, so-to-speak, and another TV dream was hurled into the abyss of communication hopes.

It was the most fun and satisfying job I ever had. Station Manager Allen Little, who had been news director for KABB-TV, asked me to do a weekly show called; “Gary DeLaune’s South Texas.” It was to run one day a week, giving me total control of what stories I wanted to do. Where I went in South Texas was up to me.

So for 15 months, we found unusual stories and rather than once a week, they ran about 25 times a week in various time slots. But when the lights went out, I began substitute teaching in the Northeast Independent School District.

Superintendent Richard Middleton recommended I get my certification to teach, but I didn’t want to be in the classroom full time, so I began “subbing” as they say. This is my sixth year to be in the classroom three or four days a week in various subjects with my preference, special education.

Each year I have noticed a deterioration in student behavior. From a lack of respect, manners and demeanor to wardrobe selection and study habits. Unless you “sub” in an elementary school, some students display a total lack of concern for their grades and their futures.

Substitute teachers are basically considered a fill-in or a babysitter, while the regular instructor is absent. Sometimes it is different when you actually “sub” in a course of your expertise or college major. Most of the time, teachers leave lesson plans and schedules for students to follow.

When you accept the job, you hope for a junior or senior class because they are usually more mature, but that’s not always the case. Specialty courses are better. Business education, computer technology, communications, etc. But a 9th grade English class is often a room of dissident and divisive students.

You are a “sub.” You are a “target.” They are unmannerly, disrespectful and rude.

When you are asked to take a class of focused, intelligent and respectful students, you feel good when you leave in the afternoon. Most of the time, that’s the way it is.

I believe there are three ways to improve classroom behavior, attention spans and motivation.

1. OUTLAW I-PODS: High school kids spend more time finding the right music than concentrating on what they should be doing in class.

2. OUTLAW CELL PHONES: No matter what the administration rule may be, and no matter how many times you write it on the board or say it in front of the students: “No cell phones.” Every kid thinks you are too old to see them using the phone in a clandestine effort. Even threats to confiscate them does little to solve the problem.

3. ALL STUDENTS WEAR UNIFORMS: With dress codes almost unenforceable, boys wearing pants low enough to see if their BVDs have holes in them, girls wearing skirts short enough to shock even Adam in the Garden of Eden, it’s time to develop some kind of a dress uniformity.

It’s highly unlikely school board members will vote on the subjects. They haven’t roamed the halls of our schools, spent hours in the classrooms and asked for quiet from 26 students who say “Huh?” or “Whut?”

My friends, “No Child Left Behind” might be the academic theme but it’s more like “Do you see my behind?” as we hope and pray for leaders of tomorrow.

There are some great young boys and girls who will some day be great young men and women and who will indeed be the doctors, lawyers and administrators in the future. I love young people and particularly their participation in sports and extracurricular activities. But unless we take measures to improve our educational environment, study habits and schoolhouse attire, the educational progress will be slowed and the behavioral patterns will be marred.

Yes, I know a lot of parents or readers will say “You should go back to radio and television and leave education to those who know what they’re doing.”

That maybe true, but as a parent, grandparent, journalist and “sub” I feel l can evaluate a classroom from a different perspective than if I had been a educator for 50 years rather than a newsman.

Plus, the one last thing that bothers me: If you get 50 percent of the class to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, you are lucky.

God maybe out of the schools and classrooms, but He certainly has to be looking in, and I’m not sure He likes what He sees.